Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [859]
The night of the carefully orchestrated Great Revelation, vampires all over the world had appeared on television, radio, in person, whatever the best means of communication in the area might be, to tell the human population, “Hey! We actually exist. But we’re not life threatening! The new Japanese synthetic blood satisfies our nutritional requirements.”
The six years since then had been one big learning curve.
Tonight I’d added a huge amount to my store of supernatural lore.
“So the vampires have the upper hand,” I said.
“We’re not at war,” Eric said. “We haven’t been at war for centuries.”
“So in the past the vampires and the fairies have fought each other? I mean, like, pitched battles?”
“Yes,” Eric said. “And if it came to that again, the first one I’d take out is Niall.”
“Why?”
“He’s very powerful in the fairy world. He is very magical. If he’s sincere in his desire to take you under his wing, you’re both very lucky and very unlucky.” Eric started the car and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hadn’t seen Niall come out of the restaurant. Maybe he’d just poofed out of the dining room. I hoped he’d paid our bill first.
“I guess I have to ask you to explain that,” I said. But I had a feeling I didn’t really want to know the answer.
“There were thousands of fairies in the United States once,” Eric said. “Now there are only hundreds. But the ones that are left are very determined survivors. And not all of those are friends of the prince’s.”
“Oh, good. I needed another supernatural group who dislikes me,” I muttered.
We drove through the night in silence, wending our way back to the interstate that would carry us east to Bon Temps. Eric seemed heavily thoughtful. I also had plenty of food for thought; more than I’d eaten at supper, that was for sure.
I found that on the whole, I felt cautiously happy. It was good to have a kind of belated great-grandfather. Niall seemed genuinely anxious to establish a relationship with me. I still had a heap of questions to ask, but they could wait until we knew each other better.
Eric’s Corvette could go pretty damn fast, and Eric wasn’t exactly sticking to the speed limit on the interstate. I wasn’t awfully surprised when I saw the blinking lights coming up behind us. I was only astonished the cop car could catch up with Eric.
“A-hum,” I said, and Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn’t been spoken out loud in centuries. But even the sheriff of Area Five has to obey human laws these days, or at least he has to pretend to. Eric pulled over to the shoulder.
“With a vanity plate like BLDSKR, what do you expect?” I asked, not so secretly enjoying the moment. I saw the dark shape of the trooper emerging from the car behind us, walking up with something in his hand—clipboard, flashlight?
I looked harder. I reached out. A snarled mass of aggression and fear met my inner ear.
“Were! There’s something wrong,” I said, and Eric’s big hand shoved me down into the floorboard, which would have provided a little more concealment if the car had been anything other than a Corvette.
Then the patrolman came up to the window and tried to shoot me.
Chapter 5
Eric had turned to fill the window and block the rest of the car from the shooter’s aim, and he got it in the neck. For an awful moment, Eric slumped back in the seat, his face blank and dark blood flowing sluggishly down his white skin. I screamed as if noise would protect me, and the gun pointed at me as the gunman leaned into the car to aim past Eric.
But he’d been a fool to do that. Eric’s hand clamped on the man’s wrist, and Eric began squeezing. The “patrolman” started doing a little shrieking of his own, flailing uselessly at Eric with his empty hand. The gun fell on top of me. I’m just lucky it didn’t